Course Schedule and Catalog

Long Title: EMPATHY: WHY WE HELP OTHERS (WIESS)

Department: College Courses

Grade Mode: Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

Language of Instruction: Taught in English

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 1

Description: Empathy is innate—evolved from a parent’s need to care for their children—but people often cannot put into words why they empathize. There’s a lot of information out there on empathy: self-help books, blog posts, and even peer-reviewed research. However, most of this information is either subjective or presents empathy as something that can be maximized with ten steps (and ten dollars). Subjective experience is a good starting point, but if we truly want to understand empathy, we need to answer the following question: what makes people empathize and why does empathy motivate them to help other people? In Empathy, students will take an interdisciplinary approach to understanding why people empathize. By exploring its psychological mechanisms, its neural correlates, how it is conveyed through language (semantics), and even computational recreations of it, students will be challenged to see empathy from a variety of perspectives. By the end of the course, students will be able to define empathy in their own words and either measure it using an inventory/tool they have written/created OR increase it using an intervention they have designed.